The exhibition is a mixture of small paintings painted in blue pigment on tracing paper larger ones with limited colour palette mainly brown on trace, larger oil paintings in red, blue and tones of brown and two painted screens. The paintings are of women and reference art historical images of women often nude painted by men. The women are relaxed, nonchalant, often holding cigarettes, palettes and paint brushes - comfortable with their naked selves. Lisa Brice alters the natural colour of skin saturating it in blue pigment referencing Trinidad carnival and Ricketts Blue used to whiten clothes and skin in the colonies of the British Empire. Lisa Brice invites us into an intimate world but also asks questions about the history of art and the male gaze. Laura Smith curator at the Whitechapel Gallery says ‘her women are never here for our pleasure; it is their own pleasure that is defiantly paramount ... her cool, recurrent and unruffled figures build an atmosphere, a feeling. Her works are not portraits of specific women, but they represent an idea, an escape towards ambiguity, emancipation and empowerment that reclaims the female body on both an international and transhistorical level.’

 

The work makes think about the male gaze and women asserting themselves through portraiture. I find the way she uses a limited colour palette interesting in relation to my current work. I have also experimented with painting on tracing paper and intend to do more of this specifically in relation to making disjointed images.